Up and down Elmwood Avenue, paint scars mark the facades and sides of the many small shops and houses where graffiti is and was. Business owners paint over the tags only to wake up the next morning to a fresh new round of unwanted markings on their walls. The patch jobs are as visible as the tags themselves—the fresh paint doesn’t blend into its background, leaving the walls visibly marred.
Drivers on the 190 can see the words “Atak,” “Lions,” and “Merk” spray-painted on the outside of rundown warehouses, water towers, stationary train cars, and road barriers. These tags are all over Buffalo—in giant letters on run-down warehouses, scribbled in the Spot bathroom, scrawled onto the wooden walls in the Pink, quickly written on stop signs and sprayed on the sides of stores.
Seeing graffiti on buildings affects some people more than others. Some people see graffiti as an illegal act of vandalism, and others see it as a guerilla artistic statement.
Recently, graffiti writers have gotten attention. With the arrests of some major Buffalo writers such as Lions, Meth, and Merk, there has been a frenzied reaction to their personal form of artistic expression. Many public officials and storeowners are vehement in demanding legal action against them. Offenders face charges ranging from fines to jail time. In editorials and blogs, Buffalonians supporting and condemning the graffiti artists have launched a heated debate as to whether the taggers are artists facing persecution or simply common criminals.
Writing down a tag name is one form of graffiti, called tagging, the signature of the graffiti writer. Murals, pieces (a smaller work), and throw-ups (mini-pieces) are more ornate, colorful, and planned out. Writers use their tag names to make pieces, elaborating on lettering, style, and design. Color, shading, and artwork can be incorporated into pieces and throw-ups, making each unique and distinct in style. Although these forms differ, they are essentially similar—they are painted in locations secretly by people who do not have permission to paint.
Pamela Beal, coordinator of both the Graffiti Hurts Task Force and the University at Buffalo Policing Center, says that graffiti is harmful to small businesses and communities. According to Beal, an estimated $8 billion is spent nationwide in an effort to clean up graffiti, and $500,000 is spent in Buffalo alone. “[Graffiti] doesn’t add any artistic quality,” says Beal of the graffiti, which she identifies as people’s nicknames or tags. “It’s not art, and it destroys the surface of a building.”
Another reason that graffiti is harmful is that it gives the impression of a more serious crime. “People think it’s gang-related,” says Beal. The difference between gang graffiti and tagger graffiti is undistinguishable. However, it is estimated by the Graffiti Hurts Task Force that 80 percent of graffiti is not gang-related.
Katherine Jemison, the owner of Spoiled Rotten on Elmwood Avenue is saddened every time she sees fresh graffiti on the side of her building. Jemison believes that writing an alias on a building is vandalism, not art. She likens graffiti writing to walking by someone and cutting their hair without permission. “I like nothing about graffiti,” she says. “Most of what I see is just writing your name.” Jemison noticed that as soon as she painted her store bright pink and made it look nice, writers began tagging up her walls.
Jemison believes that graffiti writers are simply hurting the community and hardworking people. “They aren’t making the mayor’s day harder, they’re making my boyfriend’s day harder,” she said. “In four years, we’ve spent $100 removing graffiti.”
“Jack,” a 26-year-old interested in graffiti who wishes to remain anonymous, loves it because of the message it sends. “Graffiti is meaningful because it is art that makes a statement. I love graffiti because anyone can do it, they can say anything, and they are sending a message,” says Jack. He admires graffiti writers who use the setting around them and simple words to portray a message. “The point of graffiti is to basically leave an individual imprint of yourself.”
While Jemison says that “things that hurt people aren’t pretty,” Jack believes that graffiti is the least of Buffalo’s problems, saying “graffiti doesn’t hurt anyone; it’s only paint.”
While debate continues as to whether graffiti is art, the fact remains that it is illegal. Graffiti writers avoid getting caught at all costs. Possession of spray paint, masks, and gloves is incriminating and may lead to being arrested, especially given the recent controversy with the Buffalo business community clamoring for the apprehension of graffiti writers. “The police help out by backing up the concerned community,” says Beal. Graffiti writers who have been caught face criminal sentencing, jail time, and extensive fines. In Buffalo, the graffiti writers Derek Thurlow and Fernando Godinez, aka “Merk” and “Lions,” respectively, have been sentenced with 150 hours of community service, $1,250 fines, and face a possibility of three months in jail. These taggers have incurred an estimated damage of $100,000 to the city of Buffalo, according to The Buffalo News.
More recently, Eric P. Osborne, better known as “Meth,” was also arrested. Osborne’s case is still pending, and Beal hopes he receives more than a simple community service sentence, because of the amount of tagging he has done. His sentence may include jail time, according to The Buffalo News. “Community service won’t be an option if Osborne is found guilty,” said Assistant District Attorney Thomas D. Kubiniec in an article in The Buffalo News.
Beal says the difference between vandalism and art is permission. “I love street art,” she says, “if it’s done with the owner’s permission.” She hopes that if the community connects with “the tagger culture,” writers will begin to realize the harm they are inflicting. By punishing graffiti writers in various ways, including jail time, fines, and community service, she hopes to make artists realize that graffiti “isn’t about taggers against cops.”
“The way graffiti artists are prosecuted in the legal system is absolutely ridiculous,” says Jack. To him, graffiti is a message presented in a space—similar to advertising and flyering. “If I put a sticker up, I could go to jail, when it’s the same thing as some band putting up a flyer—people don’t go back and clean those up.” Jack believes graffiti is a political form of art, since graffiti is visible and illegal—thus a form of defiance. “Graffiti is disagreement you can see,” he says.
International graffiti writers use their medium as a method of social change and awareness. For example, Bansky, a British graffiti artist, puts up political stencils all over the world—images of rats, monkeys, and pigs to convey themes of materialism and complacency. Bansky, who is known only by his tag name, also painted images of oppression and liberation on the West Bank Wall such as windows, ladders, and explosions. One image of a horse’s head projecting from the cement likens the wall and the people behind it to a stable.
He has become recognized in the art community, especially after repeatedly putting up his own artwork on renowned museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Museum of Natural History—without permission and without being caught.
Artistic quality of graffiti might influence its presence, and even people’s opinions. “I’ve never seen graffiti used [politically],” says Jemison. “I see it as a form of protest against me.” She challenges graffiti writers to eloquently challenge authority instead of spraying the equivalent of “I was here.”
